Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

20:5-6
earth? The answer should be obvious: both! The saints’
thrones are in heaven, with Christ (Eph. 2:6); yet, with
their Lord, they exercise rule and dominion on earth
(cf. 2:26-27; 5:10; 11:15). Those who reign with Christ
in His Kingdom are all those whom He has redeemed,
the whole Communion of Saints, whether they are now
living or dead (including Old Covenant believers). In
His Ascension, Jesus Christ brought us all to the
Throne. As the Te Deum exults:
When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death
Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
The reign of the saints is thus analogous to their
worship: The whole Church, in heaven and on earth,
worships together before the Throne of God, “tabernacling”
in heaven (7:15; 12:12; 13:6). To ask whether
or not the saints’ worship is heavenly or earthly is to
propose a false dilemma, for the Church is both
heavenly and earthly. Similarly, the Church’s sphere of
rule includes the earth, but it is exercised from the
Throne in heaven. Jesus said to Pilate, “My Kingdom is
not from this world. If My Kingdom were from this
world, then My servants would be fighting, that I might
not be delivered up to the Jews; but as it is, My
Kingdom is not from here” (John 18:36). The text does
not say, as some foolishly teach, that Christ’s Kingdom
is irrelevant to the world; rather, it affirms that the
Kingdom is not derived from earth: “He was speaking of
the source of His authority, not the place of His
legitimate reign. His kingdom is not of this world but it
is in this world and over it.” 28
5-6 The first part of verse 5 is a parenthetical statement
about those who are excluded from the privilege of
living and reigning with Christ. Now, if “those who had
been beheaded” (v.4) are the Old Covenant faithful,
the rest of the dead are the (primarily) Old Covenant
unfaithful, the non-saints who were dead at the time St.
John was writing. The figure can be logically extended
to include all the unredeemed, of every age, but that is
not the specific point St. John is making. Rather, he is
stressing the fact that the dead believers of the Old
Covenant have been included in Christ’s Ascension
and glorious reign from the heavenly Throne; they live,
while the wicked are dead.
Ultimately, St. John tells us, there are two classes of
people: 1) The elders and those whom they represent
(the faithful of the Old and New Covenants), who live
and reign with Christ “for a thousand years” in His
Kingdom; and 2) the rest of the dead, the unbelievers.
These did not live until the thousand years were
completed. While some interpreters have leaped to the
conclusion that “the rest of the dead” will live after the
Millennium has ended, there is no such implication
here. St. John is concerned simply to tell us about the
Millennium itself, and his phrase means nothing more
than that the rest of the dead are excluded from life and
dominion for the whole period. We all know, from such
passages as John 5:28-29 and Acts 24:15, that there will
be a general resurrection of both the just and the
unjust; but we must remember that St. John is not
writing a comprehensive Systematic Theology of the
end of the world. He is writing a Prophecy to the
Church, dealing with certain aspects of the blessings of
the righteous and the curses of the wicked.
The narrative thus continues with St. John’s definition
of the saints’ millennial living and reigning with
Christ: This is the First Resurrection – first in both
temporal order and importance. The imagery of two
resurrections is solidly rooted in Scripture. In the
Levitical system it was typologically set forth in the law
prescribing purification after the defilement of death:
The one who touches the corpse of any person shall be
unclean for seven days. That one shall purify himself from
uncleanness with the water on the third day and on the
seventh day, and then he shall be clean; but if he does not
purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he
shall not be clean. (Num. 19:11-12)
As James Jordan has shown, this cleansing ritual was a
symbolic resurrection: The man who was defiled by
contact with the dead was ceremonially dead, and had
to be resurrected from death. 29 The resurrection was
accomplished by the sprinkling of water (see Num.
19:13) 30 on both the Third and Seventh days – in other
words, a first and second resurrection. This “double
resurrection” pattern is repeated in different ways
throughout the Bible. St. John’s Gospel records Jesus’
words on the subject:
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My Word, and
believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not
come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who
hear shall live. . . .
Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming in which all
who are in the tombs shall hear His voice and shall come forth;
those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those
who committed evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.
(John 5:24-25, 28-29)
Jesus here claims to be inaugurating the Age of the
Resurrection, in which those who believe in Him are
now to be participants; later, another “hour” will come
in which all men, the just and the unjust, will rise out
of the graves (cf. John 11:24-25). St. Paul drew the
same distinction between two resurrections:
But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first
fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death,
by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in
Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. But
each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those
who are Christ’s at His coming. (1 Cor. 15:20-23)
There is thus to be a resurrection at the end of history,
at the Second Coming of Christ on the Last Day (John
6:38-40, 44, 54; Acts 24:15; 1 Thess. 4:14-17). But
28. Gary North, Backward, Christian Soldiers? An Action Manual for Christian
Reconstruction (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), p. 4.
29. James B. Jordan, The Law of the Covenant: An Exposition of Exodus 21-23
(Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), pp. 56ff.
30. On the significance of this passage for the mode of baptism, see Duane
Edward Spencer, Holy Baptism: Word Keys Which Unlock the Covenant (Tyler,
TX: Geneva Ministries, 1984), pp. 14ff.
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